Facebook purchases Parse and the deal is reported to be worth $85 million, according to Tech Crunch. Parse is a service that helps to build powerful cross-platform apps for iOS and Android using C# and .NET.

According to the Facebook dev team, "By making Parse a part of Facebook Platform, we want to enable developers to rapidly build apps that span mobile platforms and devices. Parse makes this possible by allowing developers to work with native objects that provide back end services for data storage, notifications, user management, and more. This removes the need to manage servers and a complex infrastructure, so you can simply focus on building great user experiences."

The purpose of purchasing Parse is to make it even easier to build mobile apps with Facebook Platform.